Best solution for Backing up Exchange?

Hi,

I’m trying to put together a backup strategy for a 2003 SBS. In the past, I’ve often used Exmerge to perform nightly Brick-Level mailbox backups to tape, with monthly online backups of the mailbox store(mainly just to purge the database logs and also check the store for corruption). However, I’ve noticed that Exmerge has several disadvantages, including the time it takes exmerge to backup and the resulting size of the backups.

I’m wondering if it is better to just run nightly online backups of the mailbox store and also create a recovery storage group, to allow for quick recovery. I’ve never used a recovery storage group before and I’m wondering if this is the best/fastest method of recovering after an incident.